Israel, the Diaspora and Jewish Denial

History does not repeat itself but does serve as precedent. 17th Century secularized Europe transformed Jews from religion to nation, then race. But 1700 years of Christian anti-Judaism preceded antisemitism. The Holocaust was the nearly successful final solution to Christendom’s Jewish Problem. Most Jews today limit blame to the person of Hitler. We believe our country exceptional, free of lethal antisemitism. Thus convinced we raise, no subject our children to the Precedent. This is Denial.

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Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Thank you for your email, Larry. I well remember our earlier discussion and, it appears, neither of us has much shifted in the interim! While I accept your position regarding the history of antisemitism reflected in Church/Christian policy; while I continue to accept also your distinction between us and them regarding slavery: still, beyond educating our youth to the reason we are hated, I don’t see the Zionist mission of providing for our physical salvation being advanced. My concern as I hope is reflected in all my writings is to demonstrate to the best of my abilities to my admittedly tiny audience the danger to our physical survival represented by Christendom (religion and secular); in other words, to our Diaspora.

Although not identical the threat to the state of the Jews is similar, as reflected in Bush and Iraq and, more blatantly, under the present administration. I am entirely non-(American) partisan in my comments, simply reflecting the facts as objectively as I can interpret them.

I am not so quixotic as to expect our Diaspora to rise up and leave; where to? The only other Jewish “homeland” was created under Stalin, the Jewish Autonomous Oblast in Siberia. And I hardly expect that to be open to mass Jewish immigration today even if we would all choose to move! Neither do I expect Israel to immediately abandon her quixotic “special relationship” with the US; after all, we are still tiny and vulnerable and dependent on the US, whatever the cost. What I am hoping to achieve is to raise doubt in the denial-prone consciousnesses of both communities as to the need to respond realistically to a very real environment. For me the enemy is not our lack of knowledge of the past, but our failure to accept its meaning for the future.

For our Diaspora “Never Again!” is an inappropriate and inadequate response to the Holocaust. The Shoah is a clear shot across our bow, the promise of things to come unless we take its implications seriously, and act. And for Israel, while our dependence on the West is real, it is long past time to begin looking outside Christendom for our next strategic alliance. China has few Christians and no culture or history of antisemitism; India, with its Moslem population, would still represent a problem so long as the state of the Jews remains in the Middle East. Israel simply must grow beyond her neediness, our emotional dependence on a false special relationship that in reality is special for the US, and that only so long as Israel fulfills America’s interests. And under the present US administration that bottom-line should, by now, be crystal clear.

Obama’s mouthpiece Panetta said as much,“Israel, too, has a responsibility to pursue these shared goals – to build regional support for Israeli andUnited States’ security objectives.”For the US the bottom line is the US. That was how it was in 1940 when the US chose to ignore its “special relationship” with Britain under attack from Germany. If Britain is expendable, where doesourfaith come to play?

While I understand and substantially agree with your position, Larry, short of Divine Intervention (which failed to materialize in the Roman war) I fail to see how it will affect ourphysicalsurvival in the real world, comes the real Final Solution to the West’s Jewish Problem?

Sounds harsh. But I know no other way to say that which I consider obvious.

About Me

was born in New York City in May, 1939, six months after Kristalnacht, Germany's massive pogrom against the Jews, and six months before the SS issued and executed the first orders singling out Polish Jewry for death.
Of the more than six million Jews murdered by Europe in the years 1939- 45, more than one million were children. Had the parents or grandparents of Jews surviving today not fled Europe before the war; had Germany won that war it came so close to winning; had Hitler's idol and American industrialist Henry Ford decided to run, and won his anti-Semitic populist campaign for president of the United States would even a single Jew be alive in the world today?
For David Turner Auschwitz is ever present. He sees himself not as just another American artist who matured in the shadow of The New York School; nor just an artist who happens to have been born a Jew. David sees himself, as he views every Jew alive in the wake of the Holocaust a child of Shoah.
It is this awareness that defines his life, drives his work.